


Like Ashes in Springtime

by ecphrasis



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Adoption, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Darkfic, Fire Nation Royal Family, Gen, Genocide, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Iroh adopts Zuko, Memory Related, Morally Grey Uncle Iroh, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, POV Iroh (Avatar), Unreliable Narrator, Ursa (Avatar) is a Good Parent, War, Zuko needs a stable home life, and a terrible father
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:53:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25683862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: Azulon forces a grieving Crown Prince Iroh to adopt Zuko.Iroh comes to terms the consequences of his actions in the Earth Kingdom, and learns to love his ward.
Relationships: Iroh & Azulon, Iroh & Lu Ten, Iroh & Ozai (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Lu Ten & Zuko, Ozai & Azulon
Comments: 58
Kudos: 350





	1. Returning

**First Missive**

The parchment lies heavy between his fingers, the grain of the paper rich, the royal seal incarnadine against the lighter bronze of the letter. He cracks the wax, splitting Azulon’s flame in two. He smoothes the sheaf. His hands, roughened by heavy labor, catch on the paper’s linen fibers. His name is written in characters, and it glimmers in the flickering candlelight of his tent. He touches the letter and his fingers come away gritty with gold dust. (When father writes letters to Ozai, he addresses him as prince, but Iroh’s name is always visibly mantled in his father’s favor.) _Return to the caldera. Prince Ozai has raised the issue of succession, and it must be addressed._

The letter is written in the sinuous, perfect calligraphy of the palace scribes. Whoever authored it obviously favors the older characters over the more recent ones, because they maintain radicals that fell out of common usage before Sozin’s time. The _issue of succession_ clouds his eyes with tears. 

He turns the letter over, and he’s surprised to find his father’s own cramped scrawl, his strokes inelegant, but his words much softer than the terse instructions. _I mourn with you, my son._

**First Omission**

The _issue of succession_ gazes up at Iroh mutely from an ossuary. His father had often cajoled him to have another child. _An heir and a spare is the rule, Iroh. You’re welcome to favor the former, but for safety’s sake, have the latter. Otherwise the throne will fall to Ozai._

It is cruel to strip him of his title in the same month that he lost his son, but Ozai, for once, is right. The _issue of succession_ must be addressed.

It can be addressed without him. If Azulon wants to give the title of Crown Prince to Ozai, he doesn’t need Iroh to be present. 

The ossuary observes in silence.

**Second Missive**

A second messenger hawk ruffles its feathers on the stand outside his tent. Perhaps his father has sent two letters, so Iroh has no excuse for not answering his message. He scratches the hawk’s pin feathers around its beak, and he removes the letter from its leg. The paper is of a much lower quality, and it is unsealed.

He calls a fire to his hand, and peers down at the too-large characters, imperfectly formed, the strokes of a similar size, the graphic components all rendered slightly smaller than the phonetic, as though the sound announced itself to the writer’s mind first, and not the meaning. 

Only one member of the royal family writes like a peasant.

Ursa has sent him a single line of text, one he can tell she wrote in a hurry. Ozai would be less than pleased if he knew his wife was communicating with other men. She must have a reason for risking his ire.

_Please, please come home._

Azulon he can ignore. Ursa he should ignore. 

The ossuary offers no suggestions.

**First Mise-en-Scene**

The start of winter is a few weeks out when his white-sailed ship docks in the sundrenched harbor of the crescent bay that lies open before the caldera. The royal banners are draped with white sashes, and when he disembarks, his coming is greeted by silence, and by deep genuflections to the ossuary he clutches to his chest.

The city turns out, white-clad, to watch the Crown Prince ascend up to the caldera. In the lower levels, the citizens are garbed in robes closer to grey or brown, but as he climbs upwards, the purity of the cloth’s color increases.

By the time he walks through the last gate, the noble families are arrayed in cloth the color of snow, of ash, of bone, of death, their hair long and loose, their faces emotionless. Iroh bites the inside of his lip, rather than risk shedding the tears that falter on the edge of his eyelids. The ossuary in his arms has absorbed the warmth of the autumn sun, and it reflects it onto Iroh.

He had so often basked in Lu Ten’s brilliance.

The palace is hung with white banners, and the royal family is garbed in white linen. Azulon still wears the Fire Lord’s pin in his hair, but his shoulders are absent the ostentatious wings of a warrior-emperor consumed by glory. Ozai’s hair is tucked behind his ears, long and black and gleaming. Beside him, Ursa stands, her back ramrod straight, her gaze fixed on something over Iroh’s shoulder. 

Azula, beside her father, has a single golden strand woven into her white robes. It catches and casts off sunlight; it marks her as her father’s heir.

This is how all the worst tragedies start, with a homecoming. The ossuary in his arms doubles in weight. His tongue is leaden from disuse, and he has to open and shut his mouth and open it again to get the words past the great knot of his grief settled in his throat.

“Where is Prince Zuko?”

**First Compromise**

Azulon’s words are so cruel that Iroh wonders if the old man has abandoned his senses. Ozai’s ambitions are to be expected, he’s Ozai, he’s never known when to speak or when to hold his peace, he’s always grasped after Iroh’s birthright, he’s always wanted the throne without understanding its burden. But to snatch away the man’s only son, his firstborn, and to threaten the child’s execution in response to his father’s attempt at usurpation is so vile it leaves the coppery taste of blood in Iroh’s mouth. 

“Princess Ursa asked that you resolve the matter of your brother’s conspiracy,” Azulon says. “She argued quite eloquently for your right to determine his punishment.” Azulon really shouldn’t say things like that within Ozai’s hearing.

Ozai is watching him with hooded eyes. The ossuary in Iroh’s arms must seem, to his younger brother, to be the fulcrum on which all his plans will turn. An heir and a spare is the rule, and Iroh broe it. Iroh knows his brother well enough to know that Ozai has tabulated all the many rules that Iroh disregards.

As boys, Iroh was permitted to steal desserts and contradict generals and mock Azulon’s mannerisms and flirt with girls and drink fermented rice wine until his head spun. While Ozai was whipped for the same, Iroh was rewarded by a lesson in the generation of lightning from Azulon. While Ozai languished in the palace, Iroh set off alone on his hunt for the last living dragon. _Now at last_ , Iroh knows his brother must be thinking, _Azulon's indulgent nurturing has yielded its bitter harvest: the Crown Prince, a widower and unwilling to remarry, has lost his only son and heir._

Azulon didn’t break the rule. Azulon had two children, just in case.

“Give Ozai back his son,” Iroh says. His words are too sharp to be directed to the Fire Lord, so instead he looks over Azulon’s shoulder, and hefts the ossuary in his arms to remind his father that he is carrying the corpse-ash of his son.

“No,” Azulon says, firmly. “I will not permit him to go unpunished. He is fortunate that I have left him the girl.” The girl in question is watching the proceedings through downcast eyes that glimmer far too brightly for a child of nine.

“What then?” Iroh asks. “You’re going to exile your own grandson, Fire Lord?” His mind, the part that isn’t currently curled around Lu Ten’s memory, moves another bead over in his mental abacus. He cannot disrespect his father again without facing his ire.

That’s what Ozai has never understood. The man is chronically incapable of paying attention, and it’s going to get him killed, or else it’s going to get him to kill all of them. Iroh gets to break the rules because he knows exactly how flexible they are, and he doesn’t strain them past their snapping point. 

Lu Ten had followed the rules, had enjoyed courtesy and civility and pomp. A born diplomat, Azulon had said. Ozai, the mind-numbing idiot, had taken that as his cue to suggest he be made the boy’s regent, in the event of an _eventuality_. He’d even phrased it like that, absent any grace or decorum, any attempt at hiding his ambition.

“No,” Azulon says, and Iroh relaxes. Probably he'll just send the boy to the Academy, which might do him some good, if his bending is truly as poor as Ozai lets on. “I will mingle his ashes with Lu Ten’s.”

Iroh’s aware, vaguely, of Ursa’s strangled cry, and the way Ozai’s face remains curiously blank. Maybe he’s gotten better at controlling his emotions. He’s aware too that Azulon is using his Fire Lord voice, and that most likely his father is grieving. He and Lu Ten were close, so close that Iroh’s son rarely called his grandfather by his title, and took tea with him every dawn.

Mostly, Iroh’s aware of the way the blood in his veins turns to liquid fire. He can feel the ash sifting in the ossuary, and he realizes his hands are shaking.

“No,” Iroh says, flatly. His mental abacus warns him he has overspent his father’s mercy, he’s running on credit, he’s going to anger the Fire Lord. 

But Iroh keeps another tally, and this slight is one that he will not permit. 

He shoves the ossuary into Azulon’s arms, and the old man stumbles under the weight.

“Here is your dead grandson,” he spits, and with his words bloom plumes of yellow fire. “There is no room for another.”

Azulon looks at him, really looks at him, and Iroh sees the calculation in the man’s gaze. 

“If you want the boy,” Azulon says, his words clipped, his tone sharp. “Then take him.”

**Second Omission**

The ossuary wrapped in Azulon’s white robes is all but shielded from Iroh’s view. Of course his father would use his fury and his grief to his benefit, and twist him up with insinuations and half-truths until the only way to get out of his snare would be to do exactly as Azulon wanted.

What’s left unsaid is, _if you don’t want the boy, I’ll be rid of him._

Iroh doesn’t want the boy. Iroh doesn’t want Azulon to be rid of him.

His choice, Azulon had said.

Azulon cradles the mute ossuary in his arms.

**First Misfeasance**

Crown Prince Iroh, garbed in white except for the single golden thread that marks him as his father’s heir, sweeps into the palace, with Ozai scurrying in his wake.

Lucky to be born, Azulon had often said. Lucky to be alive, Iroh thinks. His brother is an idiot, a lout, a stupid man who always underestimates and never corrects his miscalculations.

Ozai knows that Iroh is Azulon’s favored son. He should have known that Azulon would punish his disloyalty to his brother.

“I hope you lit a candle for my son’s spirit, before you tried to use his death for your advancement,” Iroh says, because anger at Ozai tends to be an all-consuming emotion, and anger is easier to manage than sorrow. His brother, wisely, does not respond.

The boy is locked up in his chambers. He leaps to his feet when Iroh swings the door open, and he bows, awkwardly, from the waist. His feet are turned incorrectly, and he’s breathing shallowly, and he flinches when he catches Iroh’s eye.

He’s dressed in rumpled white linen, and his hair is falling out of his topknot, and his feet are bare. Iroh sees the pink line of a half-healed burn on the boy’s forearm, and another on his leg, where the rumpled white fabric has ridden up to expose the child’s thin calf.

He’s much too old to be having those kinds of accidents.

“Say goodbye to your father, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, in a tone as close to gentle as he can manage. 

Ozai, in the plain white of mourning for Iroh’s only child, steps forward. Zuko, in his rumpled robes, takes a half step back.

Iroh leaves, permitting them a moment of privacy.

**Commiseration**

Zuko trails Iroh by half a step, his face contorted into something that Iroh imagines is supposed to be emotionlessness. Mostly, it looks like the boy is about to cry. Iroh leads him to his portion of the palace, the Crown Prince’s rooms, shut up from his long absence.

He turns to find the boy worrying his lip with his teeth.

Lu Ten did that too, despite Iroh’s best efforts to break him of the habit.

“Teeth,” he says, and the boy looks at him blankly. 

His arms are empty without the ossuary to burden them. The absence of Lu Ten’s anchoring weight leaves him adrift.

“Your teeth,” he says, and the boy flinches. When had Zuko become so frightened? He turns his face towards Iroh’s, though he averts his eyes, and he bares his teeth like a little animal. 

He’s got one missing towards the back of his mouth, probably the last of his childhood molars.

Iroh doesn’t want another child. He’s already raised one son without a mother, he doesn’t need Ozai’s child muddying the turbulent waters of his spirit. He cannot bear the yawning gap of Lu Ten’s absence, and he cannot fill it with Zuko’s too-small frame.

“I meant you shouldn’t bite your lip,” he says, patiently. “Hasn’t your father ever told you that?”

Zuko shakes his head no. Typical Ozai, always so inattentive.

“It’s a nervous tic unbecoming of a member of the royal family,” Iroh says, as he’d said to Lu Ten a half a hundred times. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you break the habit.” The boy’s eyes widen, his pupils dilate, and Iroh steps forwards, because he thinks the child is going to pass out. The boy all but leaps backwards. “Zuko?” He asks, softly.

“I won’t do it again,” he says. “I won’t, I’m sorry.”

“You probably will,” he says with a shrug. “I caught Lu Ten doing it when we last saw each other.” And for the length of time it takes a single grain of sand to fall between the two bulbs of an Earth Nation hourglass, his heart brightens at the prospect of seeing Lu Ten again. 

He almost gasps in pain as the awful realization of his death hits him again, crashing over him like a breaker on a reef.

He’ll never harangue his son about his habits, he’ll never awaken before dawn and find his son practicing his katas, his forms perfect, his movements fluid, he’ll never feel take tea with his only child, his heir, the last tangible memory of Iroh's long dead wife.

The boy looks at him with wide, watchful eyes, and he swallows the agony of his son’s absence. It catches on the knot of grief lodged in his throat.

By now, Azulon will have laid the ossuary beside the white marble tomb of Lu Ten’s mother.

“I promised Agni I would light a candle for him every evening,” Zuko says, his voice trembly, his eyes swimming with tears. “But I then I forgot, and- and-” if Zuko cries, Iroh is going to cry. The grief snagged on the boy’s features is a mirror to the agony tangled around Iroh, like a net snared round a river porpoise, binding him to the bottom of a saltwater river, drowning him. 

“The Fire Sages light candles at sunset for every member of the royal family,” Iroh says. He has to work to keep his voice from breaking. “But sometimes the will of Agni cannot be changed.”

“I miss him,” Zuko says. He’s the first to say so, the first to bare his grief so openly, the first to do more than bow in Iroh’s direction with an expressionless face.

“I miss him too, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, and the boy shuffles his feet, exactly like Lu Ten used to when he was sad or scared and wanted to be comforted. Iroh draws the child to his chest, and the boy hugs him tightly, burying his face in his shoulder.

For the duration of one second, by Earth Kingdom measure, Iroh allows himself to imagine that it is Lu Ten whom he clutches.

“Are you really going to kill me?” The boy’s voice is so, so small. 

What had Ozai said to him?

“Of course not,” he says. “No, no, Zuko, never. You’re going to live with me now, that’s all.” He can feel the knot in his throat contracting, he can feel his lungs burning. He’s got to say it, because it’s obvious that Ozai was too wrapped up in his own emotions to actually comfort his terrified child. “You’re going to be my son.”

**Third Omission**

What he doesn’t say is, _your grandfather warned me I needed a spare._

**Third Missive**

Iroh leaves Zuko in Meido’s hands, and commands his chief servant to leave him be. Alone in the cavernous Crown Prince’s chambers, he tears off his mourning-white robes and drapes himself in sheets the color of ash. 

His rooms are empty without the ossuary’s company. 

He pours himself a generous helping of rice wine, and he drinks. The ligature of grief draws tight around his throat, constricts his windpipe, burns his lungs, cuts off blood and breath.

He holds a letter bearing Lu Ten’s blunt calligraphic strokes. The words swim before his eyes; he reads and rereads his son’s brief summary of a month’s labor on the eastern front, a few words about a raid against Omashu gone poorly, a complaint about a shipment of rotten meat. The postscript alone differentiates the letter from any other field general’s report. Lu Ten promises to send Zuko and Azula a special kind of sweet, sugary and succulent, that dissolves as soon as it touches the tongue.

He traces the strokes of his son’s quill, and his grief carves a new channel in his heart, and he feels tears dripping down the length of his nose. He shoves the letter aside, to avoid defiling it, and he allows himself to sob.

He doesn’t hear Meido’s first knock, or her second. The third time, she knocks loudly, and he rises, wine-drunk and wretched, to scold her for her impoliteness. The Crown Prince's servants should not have the nerve to disturb their lord.

He opens the door, prepared to rage at the old woman, but her face is twisted up into a look of horror, and she tells him,

“Crown Prince, you need to see Prince Zuko.”

**Second Mise-en-Scene**

Iroh takes a sobering breath and tries to wish away the blurriness of drink, but he has been less than moderate in his consumption. He begs a moment to collect himself, and downs a pitcher of water, and rubs a mint leaf over his teeth in an ineffectual attempt to obscure the alcoholic stench.

He cannot manage the laces of his sandals, so he goes barefoot through the tatami covered halls to the narrow bedchamber where Meido has placed the boy. If Azulon is serious, if he doesn’t recant in a week or a month, whenever he thinks Iroh will no longer be at risk of fleeing the Fire Nation and never returning, then Zuko will need to be moved into Lu Ten’s old chambers.

It does not bear thinking about.

Meido opens the door for him, and he sweeps into the room, expecting to find his nephew afflicted with one of the lesser poxes. 

Instead, he sees a shivering Prince Zuko, painfully thin, his skin marred by dozens and dozens of red, pink, white weals, some recent, others long healed. No firebender burns themself like that, even accidentally.

“Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, and he doesn’t slur, because the harrowing sight of the boy’s body has driven all memory of drink from his mind. “Who did that to you?”

**Fourth Omission**

Iroh leaves the boy in his chambers and marches into the Fire Lord’s private quarters. He finds his father eating alone, looking over field reports, and he smiles at Iroh’s entrance, an indulgent smile that Iroh knows he used to offer to his own son when he was interrupted.

“My son,” Azulon says, and then he sees Iroh’s face. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Yes,” he says. That’s the thing about Ozai, he can’t ever own up to his fucking mistakes. He’s incapable of admitting his faults, and that makes it impossible for Azulon to overlook them. “And I’d like to be drinking in peace, Father, but my brother has made that impossible.” He can’t keep the hatred out of his voice, and Azulon, who likes Ozai only slightly more than Iroh does, doesn’t react.

“What’s he done now?”

“His son is scarred beyond what would be acceptable for a war prisoner.” He’s being hyperbolic, of course. Iroh’s seen men with half their faces burned off, and Zuko’s injuries are nowhere near as awful. Still, Azulon sits upright, and begins to pay attention. “He has permitted his son’s tutors to burn him in their efforts to teach him firebending. The boy’s body is littered with scars, some made by Ozai himself.” Azulon sips his tea contemplatively, and waves his hand towards his table, an invitation, should Iroh wish it, to eat his food.

He doesn’t remember the last time he ate, and he’s not sure he’ll ever want to again.

“I’ve heard the boy is a poor student,” Azulon says. “It may be that Ozai has resorted to other methods if the traditional ones have failed. I will grant that the means are ugly, but if the results are positive, I cannot fault him.”

“I don’t want Ozai near the child again,” he says. Azulon shrugs, slightly, a gesture that means the problem is immaterial to him, and that Iroh must do as he sees fit.

He doesn’t threaten fratricide if Ozai should disobey his wishes. But the thought is there, nonetheless.

**Second Compromise**

Iroh’s head throbs and the sun’s light sears his pale eyes, but he rises with the dawn, works through his katas, and robes himself in white. His eyes are red and puffy, his cheeks sallow, his lips thin and drawn, his skin pale. His hair is overgrown, his beard unkempt. He looks less a general, and more a refugee, or a brigand.

Still, he tries to make himself presentable; he takes a shuddering breath, and he makes his way into the eastern gardens, where he always took breakfast with Lu Ten.

Zuko is there, kneeling in a perfect seiza, and he looks up when Iroh joins him, and then quickly looks down.

“Did you sleep well, Prince Zuko?” Iroh asks. The boy shakes his head, and Iroh sighs. “Me neither. But perhaps these honey rolls will make us feel better.” He’s not hungry, but the boy is skin and bones, so he forces himself to eat one mouthful, and then another, and the child mimics him, then takes a third, ravenous bite, and a fourth. 

The taste of ash lingers on Iroh’s tongue, swallowing up the sweetness of the bread. He wonders if Lu Ten did manage to send Zuko and Azula the candies before he died.

The boy eats a mango next, skin and all, and downs a glass of clear water.

“I’m going to take over your education,” Iroh says. “But I haven’t taught firebending in a very long time, so you must forgive me if I move too slowly for you. Why don’t you run through your katas for me, starting with the novice set?”

Zuko stands up, shucks off his tunic, and draws the obligatory, meditative breath. His burns look worse in the early morning light.

He assumes the first position, his right foot advanced, his left behind. The boy’s left handed, it makes no sense for him to be bending with his non-dominant side, unless he's managed to become ambidextrous in the two years since Iroh saw him last. Zuko breathes, and moves.

His form is abysmal. Iroh expects he won’t manage to produce much more than a puff of smoke, and he’s pleasantly surprised when a small burst of fire erupts from the boy’s open palm. The next set is much the same, awful footwork, but a surprisingly strong discharge of fire nevertheless. He moves on to the third, and Iroh stops him with a raised palm. Zuko cringes, and tries not to cringe.

“I think we’ll work on your root,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” the boy says, and he sounds so wretched. “I know it’s disgraceful, and I don’t have an excuse. I will try harder!”

“Prince Zuko,” Iroh says. “There is nothing shameful about imperfection. I can see that you are trying very hard, and that is very admirable. Now look,” he stands, and demonstrates the correct stance for the first position. “When my feet are rooted to the earth, the energy within me can accumulate. When I shift my chi by bending my arms, I condense the fire in my stomach. When I step forward with my shoulders squared, I can expel fire like a breath.” He demonstrates, moving slowly, and he produces a plume of yellow fire from his left hand.

“But you’re going the wrong direction,” Zuko says. “You can’t bend left-handed, Father always says-” Iroh is not interested in whatever misinformed nonsense Ozai has spouted to his son.

“I made fire, didn’t I?” Iroh asks. “It’s a well known fact that Avatar Roku himself was left handed, and he managed to bend not only fire, but all the other elements too. Now, take your stance, left foot forward, yes, that’s right. A little deeper. Now breathe, right arm back, left arm up, exhale, step.”

A burst of yellow fire erupts from the boy’s palm, and he looks positively flabbergasted.

“Good job, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says.

“I really made a flame, just like Azula!”

He works through the kata again, his stance unrooted, his arms unbalanced, and he produces a solitary puff of smoke. He glances at Iroh, his face crestfallen.

“I apologize, I know I failed-”

“All you need is practice, Prince Zuko, lots and lots of practice. Let’s make a deal. You won’t apologize for the rest of the morning, and I’ll show you all the left-handed forms of the novice set. Okay?”

“Okay,” Zuko says.

He doesn’t want the boy. He wants to sit alone in his chambers and drink rice wine until he no longer has to envision his only child dying beneath ten tons of Earth Kingdom rock. But Zuko's face is so astonished, so open, so awfully, terribly hopeful that Iroh’s heart threatens to shiver into even pieces, not the sharp-edged shards formed by Lu Ten's death, but droplets of clear, reflective crystal, that catch the light of the sun and crack it open, scattering rainbows onto a man's open palm.


	2. Cleansing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the rating from T to M because this chapter's brutality surprised me. It's a brief history of Iroh's conquests for the Fire Nation, and it contains the kind of violence that's common when city-states fall to a superior power. Please be sure to check the new tags for a more detailed list of what you can expect.
> 
> My college year starts on Monday, but I'll aim to update this fic once a month or so until it's completed.

**Violation**

The members of the Royal Family are bathed in wine when they are born, and again when they first shoot sparks from their fingers, and again when they are first blooded, and once more when they are prepared for cremation. The Crown Prince, upon his crowning, and upon his ascension, and (a new tradition, begun with Sozin but continuing onwards from his day until the ending of the world) upon his marriage, is similarly doused in the rubrous liquid, the symbol of the Fire Nation’s refinement and civilization, the fruit of its fields and its heavenly sun, and thus, of Agni’s favor.

Apart from that, no alcohol is permitted to touch the royal person, a guard against the drunkenness of Fire Lord Pyron, whose viciousness caused the Tyrannicide’s revolt, and a brutal century of insurrection.

Iroh prefers rice wine, but he has a fondness for the white spirits of the northern Earth Kingdom, and he appreciates the bubbling vintages of Igni Fallow.

**Violation**

When he has had drink enough to make his head spin and his stomach churn, he dreams. Restless in his too-large, empty bed, or else collapsed on the floor before his unlit fireplace, wrapped around himself the way a wounded tigerdillo curls to protect its injured side, he bears witness to loud colors and vivid screams and the metal taste of blood mixed with ash. He sees himself, his arms red up to his shoulders, dripping blood and gore and innards, and he feels the liquid squish of a still beating heart within his hands.

It hadn’t happened like that, not exactly, but it may as well have, for all his mind drags the image before his unwilling eyes. 

He doesn’t feel like a conqueror, a general, a dragon, a hero in those moments. Drowning in blood not his own, he is a monster out of some dark legend, and not Agni’s Light Incarnate, the Glorious Treasure of Heaven, the Son of the Sun.

But after the war-dreams, brutal and bloody, come other dreams, flickering like candlelight before his addled eyes. He is a child again, he is an adolescent, he is a young man, he is middle aged, he is old, he is a corpse awaiting cremation, a pile of ashes, a mote of dust borne on the ceaseless, variable wind.

He lives his life through, each year a moment and each second a lifetime, the broken images a jumbled heap of memory in his liquor poisoned mind. 

Everything within him flares red and brilliant, the way an ember flares just before it dies. 

After those dreams come the dreams he seeks for at the bottom of his wine goblet. 

He holds a squirming Lu Ten in his arms, light and lithe and strong for his age, already promising to be of Azulon’s stature, and not Iroh’s. 

His wife stands before him, young and beautiful, newly pregnant with their second child, conceived too soon after their first. 

A moment of carelessness, he had told Azulon with a laugh. 

He did not laugh six months later. 

Lu Ten again, young and beautiful, a firebender already at the tender age of four, a bright-eyed, dark-haired, gleaming child, and all of Iroh’s soul made flesh.

And yet again, a young man now, seventeen and bold, with a warrior’s mind and a soldier’s eye and a noble disposition, clad in gleaming silver, a true Son of the Sun.

Lu Ten’s face falters beneath his hands, his eyes turn to ash, his tongue becomes as limp as a worm left bloated in the sunlight, his clever fingers and his nimble feet are pulverized, his hair is shaved close to his scalp, his body is torn apart by the Earth Kingdom, his corpse desecrated-

**Violation**

The Fire Nation has two rules of warfare. Surrender will be met with mercy. Resistance will be met with immolation.

To break either rule is to shatter the glory and the power and the indomitable might of Agni, the Sun, the Light of Truth Incarnate. To parlay with those sworn to the service of the dark, the Falsehood, the great, beguiling Lie, is to become worse than the heretics who reject Agni’s Covenant with Men.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, Heir to Fire Lord Azulon, led his armies against the walled cities of the perfidious Earth Kingdom. One by one, he stood before their tight-shut gates, and proclaimed his terms. Surrender would be met with mercy. Resistance would be met with immolation.

The first city resisted. Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, levied a six week siege against its low walls, and stopped up their spring of fresh water with the bloated corpses of their herd animals.

When they opened their gates to sue for peace, he ordered every official to be burned alive. He slaughtered their men, he castrated their boys, he looked the other way when his soldiers raped women, and children, and elders.

The second city resisted. Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, lured their soldiers into open battle. The Earthbenders had been easy to fool, servants as they were to the great Lie, the spirit of deception, and not of Truth. The ground was shifting, the sand difficult for them to bend. He cut blackened heads off of blackened corpses, and dumped them before the walls of the proud citadel, that had stood for fifty generations without falling.

The gates were opened. The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

The third city resisted.

The gates were opened. The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

The fourth city resisted. 

The gates were opened. The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, hurled the fractious Earth Kingdom’s kings’ sons from the heights of their formerly impregnable citadels.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, burned libraries filled with rare scrolls.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, blazed across the western frontier like a wildfire.

The fifth city he came to, he met with open gates. The city’s king kissed the dust on Iroh’s shoes, and sued for peace.

He exacted a heavy tribute for the war effort, and he was anointed with hebron oil and clear water, a mark of favor from the city’s protective spirit.

When he made his way to the sixth city, the fifth city, to whom he had granted mercy and protection under Agni’s Light, staged an ambush, and he had to fight men at his front and men at his back. His soldiers fell like flies around him, the fire in their souls snuffed out by crushing stone, but Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, was victorious.

He flayed the citadel’s men. He took an eye from every woman. He piled their children into living pyres, and he burned them.

He was the servant of Truth. He was the Sun Incarnate. He was destined, by birth and blood and justice, to spare the world from the infestation of the dark, the Falsehood, the great, sprawling Lie. He was Agni’s Chosen. He was righteous in his actions.

The sixth city opened its gates to him. He took the king’s young daughters, fourteen and eleven, and he sent them to live in the Fire Nation, with the promise of suitable marriages when they came of age.

The king’s son he made his cupbearer.

The sixth city did not break its truce.

The seventh city resisted.

The gates were opened. The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

The eighth city opened its gates.

The ninth city opened its gates.

The sixth city’s king was slaughtered in a coup. Iroh turned his forces around, captured the rebels, and pierced them through with nails. He left them to hang on the walls, a warning and a message. He sold their wives and children into slavery. He leveled their mighty houses. He turned their farmlands to ash.

He recalled the king’s eldest daughter, now sixteen, and he married her to a Fire Nation field-general of loyal character and a sound mind, and he installed them as the king and queen of Kalan-Liqr.

The tenth city resisted him for almost a year. When he finally overwhelmed its walls, Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, did not leave one stone standing upon another.

The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

And on, and on, and on.

**Violation**

The only things worse than his nightmares are his actions.

**Violation**

The eleventh city flung wide its gates, anointed him in hebron oil, and tried to poison him. They succeeded in poisoning his cupbearer.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun flayed the citadel’s men. He took an eye from every woman. He piled their children into living pyres, and he burned them.

**Violation**

The twelfth city resisted.

The gates were opened. The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

**Violation**

Lu Ten joined him for the thirteenth city’s sacking, a young boy, all silver mail and martial valor, the Glorious Dawn, the Son of the Sun, the Crown Prince’s heir.

The gates were opened. The men were slaughtered. The boys were castrated. The women and children were raped.

He wouldn’t stop crying afterwards. Iroh had to pry a blade from his son’s hands, and the knife’s sharp edges left his fingers bloody.

He would not do it, he could not. He would not attack women, children, old men, he would not conscience it. He would rather die than witness that again, than be a part of it.

Iroh too had wept on the battlefield, once.

He cradled his son in his arms, and felt his son’s tears drip, sizzling, onto his bleeding palm.

**Violation**

The boy would not harden, would not temper the mettle of his mercy in the fire of battle. Iroh knew what his father would do, but Iroh was not Azulon.

Lu Ten pleaded for the city on his knees, before the captive king, before the city’s populace, before Iroh, and Iroh’s army.

Weakness one way, weakness another.

He spared the city. He had to. He could not deny his heir’s request. But he could not show weakness. 

The best lessons are learned through pain.

The boy had gritted his teeth, and had only cried towards the end, when he was half delirious from agony, and no one could fault him for cowardice.

The spared city watched, silently.

Afterwards, Iroh had soothed the whip’s bite with aloe and poppy paste.

“I’ll do it again,” Lu Ten told him.

Iroh believed him.

What had he ever done to merit a child like that? How could Agni have blessed him with a son who loved the whole world more than he had any right to?

He wanted to say, I am proud of you. He wanted to say, I love you. He wanted to say, you are your mother’s son, and you are a better man than I could ever be.

He tended the injuries his beloved child, his firstborn, his heir, his only love, wounds made by his command.

Don’t make me do this again, he had said. Because I can’t.

The fourteenth city hailed Lu Ten, Son of the Sun, as the spirit incarnation of Mercy, and doused him in rose oil and yellow flowers.

The fourteenth city did not revolt.

**Violation**

The fifteenth city, bound in marriage and by old alliance to the fourteenth, offered Lu Ten a marriage to the king’s daughter. She was eight.

Lu Ten mingled his blood with hers, and named her his sister.

The fifteenth city hailed Lu Ten, Son of the Sun, as the spirit incarnation of Mercy, and doused him in rose oil and yellow flowers.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, settled himself around the walls of Ba Sing Se, like a dragon coiling around his prey.

Lu Ten made peace and promises. Lu Ten eased relations between the subjugated cities and the Fire Nation. Lu Ten traveled, dressed in silver mail and yellow flowers, across the vast Earth Kingdom, slowly becoming Fire Nation, and where he walked, peace followed.

One year turned into two, around the eternal walls of Ba Sing Se. The siege was slow, but the result was inevitable. The days ticked by, the weeks turned into months.

Lu Ten, Son of the Sun, led a squadron of men against what should have been a small garrison of Earthbenders.

Lu Ten, Son of the Sun, the spirit incarnation of Mercy, fell in an ambush to cowards and brigands.

**Violation**

The Fire Nation has two rules of warfare. Surrender will be met with mercy. Resistance will be met with immolation.

Crown Prince Iroh could not bear for his child’s corpse to become carrion, to be left to rot into the earth of a kingdom not his own.

Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Light, Son of the Sun, sued for peace.

He bought it dearly.

The city of Ba Sing Se, besieged for six hundred days, guaranteed to fall, and to collapse the Earth Kingdom in the process, would be left standing.

In exchange, the body of Lu Ten would be delivered in a plain white ossuary.

**Violation**

Every drop of blood he spilled, he spilled for Lu Ten’s future empire.

Every child he saw slaughtered, every woman he saw raped, every man he saw burned alive, he gazed upon mercilessly, because their brutal ends would buy Lu Ten peace.

An ossuary cannot hold a throne.

He immolated his son, his heir, his child whom he loved more than he loved the sun, on the bonfire of the eternal war, and all he had to show for it was ash.

Crown Prince Iroh prefers rice wine, but he has a fondness for the white spirits of the northern Earth Kingdom, and he appreciates the bubbling vintages of Igni Fallow.

He doesn’t care much about what he drinks anymore. He drinks what will make him dream.

When he dreams, between the broken fragments of war and death, sometimes Lu Ten will come to him, alive and garlanded in flowers, a child of peace.

**Violation**

“Uncle Iroh?” The boy’s voice is small and scared. Iroh is grateful his nephew has not found him in a pool of his own vomit. He rouses himself from the cold stone floor of his chambers, and finds Zuko crouched above him, his eyes white and white, his frame trembling.

He’s killing himself, Iroh realizes. He’s killing himself the slow way, the coward’s way, the woman’s way, through poison and deception. At seventeen, Lu Ten was man enough to pick up a silver dagger. Iroh's going to drink himself into oblivion, and then the Fire Nation will be left to Ozai’s mismanagement.

All of Iroh’s conquests will collapse within five years of Ozai’s ascension. 

What does it matter? Lu Ten will never sit the Dragon Throne, Lu Ten will never rule the Fire Nation, Lu Ten will never gaze upon the world with a conqueror’s even eye.

The Light of Agni may as well be extinguished, now and forever.

“Uncle Iroh?” Zuko asks, trembling in every limb as though afraid Iroh will strike him. “Are you sick?”

Yes. He is sick, he has been for a long, long while. He may never recover.

“Leave me alone, Zuko,” Iroh says. It’s a direct order from the Crown Prince; his orders are not to be disobeyed.

The boy rises from his place beside him, and his soft feet pad away.

Iroh shuts his eyes, feels his mind and body roiling together, and wonders when he will next feel strong enough to rise and drink so he may lie down and dream once more.

The boy’s feet pad closer, and closer still.

A dripping wet rag is brushed across Iroh’s forehead.

The liquid water drips across his nose, into his mouth. His tongue is wooly from wine, his head throbs at the water’s chill.

“What are you doing?” He asks. He means to demand, to sound imperious, but the way his voice cracks, it sounds almost like a sob.

“When I’m sick my mom uses a rag to cool my fever,” the boy says. His voice is quavery when he talks about his mother.

Iroh wonders how long it’s been since Zuko has seen Ursa.

He should have permitted their visitation.

What else has he overlooked?

He is the Crown Prince. It is not his brother’s son’s job to tend him. He forces himself to sit upright, despite the burning in his head and behind his eyes.

“Thank you, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says. “I feel much better already.”

**Violation**

Iroh pours his rice wine, his Earth Kingdom spirits, his clear liquor, and his bubbling vintages out his window.

The liquor mingles with the winter rains, defiled and unusable.

He makes himself a cup of jasmine tea, and tries to pretend his hands are not shaking.


	3. Memory

**Message**

Time is wound round the great spindle of the earth, and it unspools in dreams and memories alone. Iroh knows that deeds, once done, cannot be recalled, and time, once passed, cannot recur.

And yet, he turns his mind towards the education of the child, and his memories reel backwards. He taught Lu Ten the same poems, the same katas, the same rules of ritual politeness. He watched Ozai fail the same lessons. He himself learned them, years ago, and he often heard his father speak of his own education under Fire Lord Sozin.

He had not thought the task of training the Fire Nation’s future ruler would fall to him again.

The lessons and the days blur together. Iroh watches the child’s eyes slide off his primer on poetic tropes, or his histories, or his introduction to taxation economics, and grow wide with daydreams. He hums to himself when he works on his calligraphy, popular tunes from public theatrics, completely inappropriate for the gaze of a member of the Fire Nation Royal Family, or else he mouths his mother’s valley-songs.

Lu Ten was never much interested in music.

“Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, gently, pausing from an admittedly very dry introduction to dualistic cosmology. The boy’s relaxed posture stiffens, his muscles tense, and his spine straightens.

“Yes?” he asks, looking at Iroh obliquely, from beneath his thick lashes. 

The child’s frame, slender for his age, stiffens in something Iroh is loath to call fear, but which he cannot interpret through any other name. 

Iroh warms the cooling cup of tea in his palms, and sips. The scent of last year’s roses fills his nose, and he finds himself wishing he and Lu Ten had been granted leave to come home to celebrate the harvest festival one last time.

Lu Ten always liked the pageantry of spirit days.

Iroh turns his gaze towards the child at his feet, and he does not let his mind wander further. 

“Would you care to tell me what I just read to you?”

“Um,” Zuko says. The little livid burns have faded on his skin, faded to white lines and pink scars. Iroh can see their stigmata when Zuko shifts in the sunlight. He watches the memorials of Ozai’s viciousness play across the body of his son.

Such cruelty, and to so soft a child.

And yet, had he himself not ordered Lu Ten to be beaten bloody? 

“Um,” Zuko says again. He bites his lip, and Iroh chooses not to point it out. Zuko takes a breath, his lungs expand, and Iroh’s heart clenches, because through the thin cotton of his schoolboy’s robe, he can see the outline of the child’s bones. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry. I know it’s disgraceful and unbefitting of-”

“That’s alright, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says. He has another steadying sip of tea, and his fingers curl around the delicate green ceramic of the cup. His throat is oddly tight, and the embers in his stomach shift. Zuko looks at him with eyes more mournful than a hierophant’s victim. “It’s difficult to ask a boy to sit so still for so long,” he says. “Perhaps I’ll make use of your restless energy. Won’t you report a message to Fire Sage Shissona for me?”

It’s a good two mile run from the central palace to the hilltop shrine where the eternal flame is maintained. Iroh will have an hour, by Earth Kingdom measure, to conduct his own affairs. A run, especially with bare feet, will do the boy good, will harden him-

Azulon often sent Iroh scampering around the imperial complex, to accustom him to a warrior’s constant movement, and to ensure he was familiar the ministers he would, eventually, rule.

And so Iroh had sent Lu Ten off too, bearing messages engraved in his memory, to harden mind and body simultaneously. The art of memorization is essential for a future Fire Lord. Total recall of every word spoken is ideal. 

A run will harden him for war. For war.

The boy is eleven, nearing twelve. He is slight for his age, slender, woefully behind in his firebending. He has perhaps six years before the front lines will summon him from the warm enclosure of the Fire Palace towards the frontier of the Sun's expanding light.

“Really?” Zuko asks, brightly, then he remembers his manners and tries (and fails) to school himself into emotionlessness. His schoolboy’s robes are too large for his body. Iroh realizes with a sudden sickness that he is wearing Lu Ten’s cast-offs. “I mean, of course, Crown Prince.”

His bare feet will raise no dust from the muddy mountainside. It is winter, and that means the rains have come. He will slosh through mud, just as he will on the battlefield some day, and his legs will grow cold, and he will have to place his feet carefully to keep from slipping on the steep slope.

It is the way of things. Iroh ran messages for Azulon. Lu Ten ran messages for him, as a child.

The Sun’s scions have always prepared for war within the safety of the Caldera. All their education has been turned towards the end of victory.

Zuko can be no different. Change is heresy. Steadfastness is the foremost of Agni’s virtues. 

“Uncle Iroh?” Zuko asks. Iroh lifts his head.

His tea is cold in his hands again, and the sun has shifted. His mind reels, and his eyes blur. His throat burns for the taste of white spirits.

His skin is coated in a sheen of sweat. 

“I took the message,” Zuko says. His legs are muddied, his robes wet with rain.

Iroh wonders what he told the child to say.

“Repeat it back, please,” Iroh says. The child draws himself upright, and roots himself on the flagstones. He opens his mouth to speak, and Iroh notices, absently, that Zuko’s last lost tooth has begun to grow from his pink gums.

“Crown Prince Iroh, Agni’s Heir, Son of the Sun, greets Shissona, Fire Sage of the Imperial Shrine, with high favor, and hopes for Agni’s favor. The Crown Prince requests a triple honor, firstly that the Fire Sage listen to this one,” Zuko gestures to himself, bending his wrist in the formal mode. “And secondly that he provide a record of the spirit sacrifices offered at the Imperial Shrine, and thirdly, that he bless this one with the sign nourishing flame.” Zuko holds out a catalogue of the shrine’s victims with a slight bow, and Iroh looks over the Fire Sage’s careful characters.

They swim before his eyes. 

“You must run faster in the future,” Iroh says. “You dallied needlessly, you spent much longer than was necessary away.”

“Sorry,” Zuko says, then, unnecessarily dips his head to the fourth degree, to apologize for his informality. “The Fire Sage said I could visit Lu Ten.”

Iroh has not seen the white ossuary since he shoved it into Azulon’s shaking arms.

“I lit two candles,” Zuko says. “One for me, and one for you, since you sent me in your place.”

Iroh takes a shuddering breath, and the tea in his teacup steams again. 

“Thank you, Prince Zuko,” he says. “You’re all dirty. Go wash up.” The child dips his head, and flits away.

**Commemoration**

Iroh sits at his father’s feet. He’s growing too old to be entirely comfortable crouched on the ground beside the Fire Lord. The office of Crown Prince grows ever more constraining. The winter rains carve agony into his old wounds, and he struggles to warm the tips of his fingers.

Azulon’s hand is warm on his head, a mark of favor, of love.

Azulon has always favored him. Azulon has always loved him.

His father’s hand has grown old and wrinkled, and liver spots afflict his formerly blemishless skin. The servants say he no longer summons women to his chambers, even infrequently, and the Fire Sage says that the Fire Lord spends hours on his knees before Agni’s eternal flame.

Ozai sits in Azulon’s shadow, separated from the bright fire of their father’s eyes. Iroh can feel his brother’s gaze burning into his back.

The court poet chants in the Gayatric meter, the octosyllabics flowing smoothly from the woman’s liquid throat.

The flashing glory of Lu Ten dances before Iroh’s eyes as the poet enumerates his son’s heritage, his stature, his nobility, his accomplishments.

Lu Ten was the Son of the Sun, swift-stepping sunbeam of Agnii’s tireless vision, open-eyed beholder of Earth, wielder of purifying fire,

all true, all true. But Lu Ten caught raindrops in his cupped palm and drank of them when Iroh took him hunting in the Black Hills, Lu Ten preferred swimming in the Emerald Cove to anywhere else, Lu Ten loved hawking, Lu Ten slept always on his left side, curled up like a laprabbit, and he gnawed on his lip when he was nervous.

Such little truths have no place in elegiac poetry.

But Iroh holds their memory within his cupped palms, and he feels Azulon’s hand tremble on his back, and he knows that if he looks behind him, he will find his father crying.

Beside him, kneeling on a purple cushion, Zuko taps out the Gayatric meter with one errant finger. 

The boy loses count when the caesura is elided over, and Iroh loses himself in the Court Poet’s recitative voice. 

Lu Ten’s spirit has not troubled the dreams of anyone at Court. He has not offered dreams to the Fire Sage, or sent omens to the haruspex, or produced prodigies in the extremities of the Fire Nation’s holdings. His spirit has, perhaps, been swallowed up by the earth which he will never walk again. 

**Mourning**

Iroh wakes long before dawn, and he rises from his low bed and performs his firebending forms.

His flame is weaker than it has ever been before, and he has not managed to summon lightning to his fingers in weeks. Perhaps he has not done so since before Lu Ten’s death.

All the days have blurred together. 

He treads lightly over the tatami mats in his deserted household, and he finds himself, at last, before the shut screen door of Lu Ten’s room.

He raises his hand to push aside the thin rice paper, but the sound of a half-stifled sob stays him.

He turns towards Zuko’s bedchamber.

The child is curled up on his left side, his hair slick with nightmare sweat, his cheeks tear-stained.

He’s too old for such tears, Iroh knows. But he is small for his age, and he has not been crying loudly. There is no shame in secret sorrow.

Azulon would wish him to leave the child alone, to learn to manage his agony as a warrior would.

“Zuko, Zuko,” Iroh hushes. “Zuko, what’s this about?”

“Uncle Iroh?” He asks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

The boy looks so fragile, so thin, so like the Lu Ten of Iroh’s memory. He gathers the child up into his arms, and he wraps his arms around Iroh’s neck.

“Sorry,” he says, wretchedly, and Iroh smoothes back his long, dark hair.

“My child,” he murmurs. He can allow himself a deception, in the dark hour before dawn. He can pretend the boy he holds is the one he loves more than he loves the sun. The boy goes boneless in his embrace, he allows Iroh to pull him against his chest. “What is it?”

“I had a dream,” Zuko says. “I dreamed we went to Ember Island like we used to, but the sea - there wasn’t waves on it, it was just like glass, and you could walk on it. All the boats were frozen. And I walked out deep enough so I could see my reflection, but when I looked it wasn’t me, it was- it was him,” a sob wrings itself from his chest. “And then I was frozen like the boats, and he was moving instead-”

“Who, my child?” Iroh asks. The boy curls further into his arms.

“Lu Ten,” he says, and shudders.

Iroh makes a sign to ward off evil, out of Zuko’s sight.

“It was just a dream,” Iroh says.

“Fire Lord Azulon said I would be given his name,” Zuko says. “I don’t want it, I can’t be him, Uncle Iroh, please.”

“That’s a long way off, Zuko,” he says, gently.

“I can’t,” Zuko says. “I can’t replace him, I’m not good enough-”

“You don’t have to replace him,” Iroh soothes. 

But if he shuts his eyes, the weight of the child in his arms is almost equal to Lu Ten’s weight in his memory. 


End file.
